WWII paranoia, rocket trajectories, behavioral psychology, entropy, and the systems that govern human life. The Pulitzer committee refused to give it the prize (calling it "obscene, unreadable, overwritten"); it won the National Book Award instead. Pynchon invented the "systems novel" here in 1973. The encyclopedia as narrative form.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.